


i'll never know another love like yours

by aftersome



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28873083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aftersome/pseuds/aftersome
Summary: And because their world once revolved around each other and so little of anything else, they both knew it meant that they would try again — as friends, this time. Relearn what had once been instinct: knowing each other.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Kudos: 5





	i'll never know another love like yours

**Author's Note:**

> i missed iwaoi so i wrote this with nothing particular in mind. just making things up as i go, and this is the result! the songs that inspired me while writing are as follows: lifetime by ben&ben, line without a hook by rick montgomery, and evermore by taylor swift. ah, regrets and learning to heal — a good combination! 
> 
> side note: i only skimmed through this during the editing process so there might be errors :)

Everyone knows that Oikawa and Iwaizumi are an inseparable set. Joined at the hip. Two sides of the same coin. Take one away from the other, and it’s like the Earth’s orbit has gone astray: it doesn’t feel right. Of course, everyone also knows and understands that they are different individuals who wouldn’t drop dead at the absence of the other. (God forbid Iwaizumi would let anyone think he needed Oikawa as much as the latter needed him. It’s true, though, regardless of how much he protests.) But it’s just so much easier to assume that where Oikawa is, Iwaizumi is, too, than not. It comes naturally, the assumption. Like instinct. The next thing you’d think after Iwaizumi is Oikawa. If you’re looking for that eccentric brown-haired setter, the first person you’d think to ask is Iwaizumi.

It’s just the way the world around them worked, and no one really cared to change it. 

Oikawa’s first memories were of Iwaizumi and him. And being younger by a month, he’d never really known a world before him. As next-door neighbors, Iwaizumi had always been a constant presence in his life, a familiar rock that had always kept him from drifting further from the shore. Sometimes he’d feel like he was more of a burden than a friend, but Iwaizumi was always there to smack him in the head and tell him he was being stupid.

Perhaps that had been what decided the dynamic of their friendship. Even now, Oikawa would smile at himself whenever he thought back to when times were simpler. Wistfulness was a trait of his that Iwaizumi would sometimes tease him for, when they were kids. “You and those thoughts of yours,” he’d say, “no wonder you’re so obsessed with aliens. Your head’s always up in the clouds!” When they grew older, though, Iwaizumi would only stay quiet and listen to Oikawa’s ramblings with that silly expression on his face that Oikawa only later recognized as tenderness. And love.

Love. Like any other childhood friend, Iwaizumi had been there for many of his firsts, even before they knew what life was. They’d shared their first steps, first words, first touch of a volleyball. Iwaizumi had witnessed Oikawa’s first love, a high school girlfriend whose name he barely remembers now. Iwaizumi had listened to him gush about his first kiss: “Sloppy,” he’d said. “I hurt my teeth. Not what I expected, but it felt really nice!” (Iwaizumi’s eyes followed his fingers as they reached up to touch his lips.) Iwaizumi had taken him out for ice cream when he experienced his first heartbreak, side-eyeing him with a disgusted look on his face as Oikawa whined: “She said I was too obsessed with volleyball. What does that even mean?”

It’s a bit odd to Oikawa now, in retrospect, how he never once thought twice about the way Iwaizumi had looked at him like he’d done a million things at once, a monstrous feat from one angle, but celestial from another. Like Oikawa was running too fast for him to keep up with, but he tries anyway because it’s worth it. It’s clearer in Oikawa’s memories now, though, how Iwaizumi had always looked at him as if he were a godsend, as if he were a man stranded in a desert and Oikawa was an oasis. Even when Oikawa had been at his worst, there was always a tenderness in Iwaizumi’s eyes when he looked at him.

And he hated himself for seeing it too late. For taking Iwaizumi for granted. 

Turns out, if you had been anchored to the shore your whole life, you’d forget that rocks also break.

When Iwaizumi asked him to be his best man at his wedding, he spent weeks in the bar, downing drink after drink and moaning about a lost love he once thought he’d never live without. Intoxicated and unable to control his mouth, he told the bartender about his situation. Pity, of course, was the first response to his story. He didn’t mind. He, too, pitied himself, and there’s little he could do beyond that. 

“Are you going to say yes?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” was his response, but that was a lie, and they both knew it. Just like Iwaizumi had been to Oikawa when they used to be Iwa-chan and Shittykawa, Oikawa found it difficult to say no to him. Even when it hurt his lungs as the world closed around him. Even when his limbs tired from trying to swim back to touch the shore once more. 

He’d never known a world without Iwaizumi, and now he’s supposed to find out. 

How cruel, fate is. Abrupt. A swift, silent killer. You blink once, and the next thing you know, your whole life has been snatched away from you. Not that he had any right to complain, though. It was his fault for letting Iwaizumi go. If only he could turn back time and run after him that night, tell him that, all along, he loved him a lot more than he realized, loved him before he even knew what it meant. 

“Can’t believe Iwa-chan’s getting married,” he’d grumbled to the bartender, burying his face in his arms, “and I’m gonna be all alone!” It’s a childish complaint, but he doesn’t know what else to say. He’d bared his soul to this random stranger, told her about the deepest hurts embedded in his chest. He didn’t want to let her in any further and tell her how much it stung him that Iwaizumi was getting married to a man Oikawa barely even knew. And it would ache him a thousand times more to admit to anyone other than himself that there is a completely different side of Iwaizumi that he doesn’t recognize anymore, a life he’s living that didn’t revolve around Oikawa, barely even included him. 

That wasn’t, after all, supposed to be the way the world worked. It was supposed to be him and his Iwa-chan, against the world, if it wasn’t with them. They were supposed to be an inseparable set — everyone knew that. Joined at the hip. Two sides of the same coin. Not this… this dull, gray void of uncertainty and unexchanged words.

This must be, he decides, why lately nothing in his life had felt right anymore. Iwaizumi had fallen off Oikawa’s orbit, gone astray with some other man Oikawa knew next to nothing about other than his name and the fact that he was going to be with Iwaizumi for the rest of his life. 

(Maybe Iwa-chan was telling the truth, he thinks dimly, when he kept insisting that he didn't need Oikawa as much as the latter needed him. Perhaps he’d always known that he would one day grow out of it, learn to live without the pull of Oikawa’s gravity.)

A bitter realization: Iwaizumi was no desert-stranded man, and Oikawa was no oasis. There had been a time, of course, when that had been the truth, but that time is no longer now. Now is a time where they didn’t need each other to live, didn’t need one to be around for the other to have a life. Painful as it is, Oikawa is going to have to accept it. There’s not much else he could do, anyway.

“This is the last time coming here,” he’d told the bartender. 

“Thank God,” she’d said, and that was the last she ever saw of him.

That was three days ago, and now he’s in his apartment, staring at his phone on the coffee table, debating how best to tell Iwaizumi yes to his offer. A long time ago, he never would have hesitated. Calling Iwaizumi then had been the same as breathing. Then again, a long time ago, he never had to accept Iwaizumi's invitation to be his best man.

Biting his lip, he tells himself to get over it and dial the damn number. He does so and waits anxiously for Iwaizumi to pick up.

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi says, in the same gruff way he’d done over the course of their lifetime, only this time there is something so different. Something lacking, an unexplainable yearning and sense of inadequacy that’s settled themselves in the depths of his chest. Iwaizumi had spoken his name with a lot less care now. He used to call his name like he’d known what Oikawa was going to say before he even said it. 

“Iwaizumi.” There goes another punch to his gut. He doesn’t call Iwaizumi “Iwa-chan” anymore. At least not to his face. “Sorry it took so long for me to answer. Been quite busy lately.” He licks his lips, which had become dry. “I’ll be your best man, if the offer’s still on the table.”

There is silence on the other end of the line, and for a moment Oikawa thinks Iwaizumi had found another. Again. But Iwaizumi just sighs with relief into his ear. “Glad to hear that,” Iwaizumi says. “I thought I was going to get married without a best man.”

Oikawa laughs, and for now he tries to forget the great divide between them, the yawning gap that had slowly been drilling holes into the wall that is their friendship. It’s even scarier now that he’s not quite sure how thin the wall had become. “I bet you tried to replace me,” he says light-heartedly, and part of him strangely wishes Iwaizumi would say yes. Perhaps his subconscious thought that more pain would help him grow numb sooner than later. “But of course, you couldn’t. I’m one of a kind, you know. There’s no one else like me.”

“You know there’s no else I’d want to be my best man but you,” Iwaizumi says. 

That’s the goddamn problem, isn’t it? He wants to scream, but he doesn’t have the right to. Not anymore. Sure, Iwaizumi still wants him to be his best man at the wedding, probably because of their long history, but they both know that with everything that’s changed between them, they sure as hell aren’t the best of friends they once were. And this, this was the goddamn problem that he couldn’t say: Iwaizumi wants Oikawa to be his best man, but Oikawa wants to be the one Iwaizumi meets at the altar. 

Oikawa forces a laugh. “I’ve always known I was popular, but sometimes it still blows my mind how many people are so desperate for me to grace them with my presence.”

Oikawa doesn’t need to know the new and unfamiliar Iwaizumi to guess that he’s rolling his eyes. “You never change, do you?” 

“For what purpose? I’m already perfect the way I am.” His tongue falters at the last word. How pathetic he would have been, if he truly believed that. (And right now he wishes he really is. If he had genuinely been nothing short of perfect, then maybe Iwaizumi wouldn’t have left him. The perfect Oikawa would have never let Iwaizumi walk away. With his heart, no less.)

“It’s on the day after tomorrow, by the way,” Iwaizumi says, “my bachelor’s party. You coming?”

Oikawa’s already answering before he could think about it. _Like instinct_. “Okay,” he says, and there's a round-leaved bittersweet crawling up his bones, its woody vines snaking their way through the cracks between his ligaments. If his bones could breathe they would have choked. “I’ll go.” He doesn’t say, though, that his heart is beating too quickly to be considered healthy at the thought of seeing Iwaizumi. He doesn’t say that his throat is closing in on itself, and he feels like crying all over again because holy shit, just when he thought he could bear the pain, it turns out that he could barely handle it at all. 

“Alright, Iʼll see you.”

Oikawa knows Iwaizumi well enough to understand the core of his being, which would not change no matter how many times the stars in the sky are rearranged, no matter if he is now a stranger to Oikawa; understands him well enough to know that Iwaizumi noticed the continental drift that had been breaking them apart. 

And so he could not comprehend why Iwaizumi was so adamant on keeping Oikawa within his sights. Surely heʼd know that things would never be the same after they had broken up. Not when Oikawa still yearns for him so strongly that it hurts even when itʼs already been a year. 

At night, when Oikawa makes the mistake of falling asleep, his subconscious becomes a movie he can neither pause nor fully stop. He dreams of that night, when they fell like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, burned the way the Library of Alexandria went aflame. He'd tried suppressing memories of it, shoving it in a wooden chest with rocks and chains, leaving it on the ocean floor, never to know the touch of sunlight for eternities to come. But sometimes those rocks fall off and the chains slide open, and the chest is called to the surface in a not-nightmare. 

The tragedy replays in his head over and over. From start to finish, no fast forwards, no shortcuts. It plays on, each agonizing scene making it hard for him to breathe, every detail ingrained into the meat of his brain, burning hot like a fresh tattoo. 

The beginning: Oikawa was waiting at the old playground where they used to hang out when they were in high school, usually after particularly draining practices. They had been home for the holidays, and they were supposed to head back to the city together the next day. 

Though for some reason that Oikawa didn't know then, Iwaizumi had called him over to tell him something. 

"Oikawa," Iwaizumi had said, his breath turning to visible fog and disappearing into the winter air, and Oikawa smiled at the sound of his voice before he even looked up to meet his eyes. 

"Iwa-chan," he said. "What business was so important you couldn't wait until tomorrow to see me?" 

"I wanted to start my year right this time. I owe it to myself," Iwaizumi said, and it's only when the moment replays in Oikawa's head as a dream that he realizes how thick Iwaizumi's voice had been, so full of emotions he couldn't read. Had that been the start of their divide? Had that been when the first cracks on the ground between them began to appear? That very moment — when Oikawa could not recognize the face he had been looking at? 

"What, you wanna kiss me for New Year or something, Iwa-chan?" he teased. "I know you love me, but contrary to popular belief, I'm not one for public displays of affection, really." 

If Iwaizumi’s unfamiliar face hadn’t been enough to make the alarms in Oikawa’s mind ring, the fact that he didn’t snap back at Oikawa’s remark was. Immediately, his brain started to think about what had gone wrong. Did he somehow cross the line and do something to offend Iwaizumi? That was unlikely, of course. This was Iwa-chan. He knows Oikawa, Oikawa knows him. There was nothing they could do to hurt each other.

Except there was. Oikawa had just been too complacent, too used to Iwaizumi’s constant presence, that he didn’t even consider it was possible. And he had unknowingly been doing it all along.

“I…” Iwaizumi started, and it looked like it took him great effort to proceed with whatever it was that he planned on doing. He reaches forward to take Oikawa’s hand, and the latter swears that he had never felt such coldness in him. Iwaizumi’s palm was warm, like always. Rough from the hard touches of countless volleyballs, but it was home. And on that night, the eve he still sees vividly in the backdoors of his mind, behind closed eyelids, home had been empty and dreadful — cold despite the warmth.

Something had opened in the pit of Oikawa’s stomach, then, sucking everything in. He wanted to vomit. “You’re scaring me Iwa-chan.”

“Oikawa, what are we?” Iwaizumi said, finally. 

Oikawa laughed nervously, but the tension in his muscles were still there, and he could feel it with every miniscule move he made: brushing his hair out of his eyes, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I thought we talked about this,” he said lightly. “We like each other, Iwa-chan. That’s all that matters.”

“But this matters to me,” Iwaizumi insisted. Oikawa thought that was the end of it, but he seemed to be gaining confidence, the heat crawling up to his face, because he let go of Oikawa’s hand and continued, “I’ve been in love with you since the moment you showed me what love is. I followed you around my whole life until it became second nature, like instinct, because you were all of my firsts and I wanted you to be all of my lasts. When you finally came to me on your own, more than two decades of silent yearning later, I thought, this was it, finally. But then you told me you didn’t want to rush things, said our friendship was too precious for you to allow it to be ruined by reckless decisions.”

Oikawa did say that. And look where they are now, how distant, how broken. A ghost town with nothing but the ruins and memories of what had once been great. A worn down palace haunted with regrets and what-ifs. 

“I understood you, kept understanding you even when it hurt, because I knew how easily your mind gets swept by internal fears,” Iwaizumi said. “I waited for you my whole life, what more were a few days, a couple of months? And how long has it been since then, Oikawa? How long do you have to keep me waiting?” 

“Iwa-chan—”

“I just don’t understand what you’re so afraid of,” he said. “Had the lifetime we’ve spent together not been enough?” He sighed then, and Oikawa’s heart clenched at the thought of him sounding so weak, so frail, so confused. “I don’t even know what I’m waiting for now, or if it’s even worth it.”

Oikawa hadn’t known what to say, had barely even remembered to breathe. He just stood there, eyes on Iwaizumi and hoping that would be enough to ask him to stay. 

Iwaizumi nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “I figured as much, but I still wanted to ask, in case you’d finally give in.” He forced a smile and pressed both his hands on either side of Oikawa’s face. Oikawa couldn’t help but think that it was going to be the last time he’d ever do that. He hadn’t known how right he was. “I’m ending this,” Iwaizumi said. “Whatever we have, it’s over. I’m done.” 

The ending: Oikawa watched — again, again, again — as Iwaizumi turned to leave, tracking footprints on the snow beneath him as he went.

When he wakes, the morning is gone, and it is afternoon. Heaviness shackles his body to the bed, and it’s a struggle to even sit upright. Even still, he drags himself across the floors of his apartment, forcing his body to move. He eats last night’s leftovers with little enthusiasm, his dampened mood doing the opposite of whetting his appetite. 

The dreaded bachelor’s party will come in less than a day, and there’s no backing out of it. Knowing Iwaizumi, there’s no way he’d let Oikawa bail without getting to the bottom of it. And he really didn’t want Iwaizumi to know how deep his feelings still ran.

He sighs for the hundredth time in the thirty minutes he’s been awake. How in the world did things come to this? And why did he ever let it?

The rest of the afternoon passes by in a blink, uneventful and horrible. He’d spent the remaining hours of the sun sitting in his bathtub, hugging his knees to his chest, deep in thought, until his skin wrinkled like a withered flower of which the fluids had been sucked dry. If his skin hadn’t itched, he never would’ve noticed.

He decides, then, as he stands on the tub, drops of soapy water trailing down his skin to join their brethren below, that he’ll attend the party with a brave face and hidden fists, and this will be the last time he ever cries about it. This party will be his closure, and no more of his tears will spill in the name of Iwaizumi. 

To clear his head and shake his nerves off, he goes for a run. He had just gotten out of the bath, but he doesn’t really mind, nor does he care. Anything to keep his mind off things. Earphones in, he starts jogging in place and stretching — a warm up. Then off he goes: mindless with each step, the thumping of his feet blocking all the other noises in his head. For now, there will be no marriage, no drift between life-long friends, no problems to mend or confront. For now he is one with the wind.

He only starts huffing at the third lap, slowing down a bit to catch his breath, but not stopping. Never stopping. To pause all motion for even a split second would mean putting his guard down, and reality would come crashing in through the tiny opening, tearing apart what little composure he had left. He thinks of the way stars burn and die — how their light would reach the end of its lifetime without ever having touched the farthest arms of the galaxy — and decides that maybe he’s not too far off. Humans, he remembers, descended from the stars after all. 

He stops running only after hunger comes to take from him what he does not have, so he finds a convenient store, muscles burning, and buys for himself a bottle of water and some milk bread. From there, he he walks back home while taking bites from his food. He’s physically exhausted, but mentally refreshed, so he does not mind the aching of his calves as he strolls back to his apartment.

It’s a bit later into the night by the time he opens his door and turns on the lights. He pulls his earphones out of his ears and tosses his phone on the couch. He leaves for the kitchen to cook some noodles and when he returns, his phone lights up. There’s a text. He opens it, and it’s from Iwaizumi.

 **Just remembered I haven’t really told you much about the wedding** , he writes, **since you only just confirmed your attendance. I’ll tell you everything at the party tomorrow so be sure to come!**

Did he write this with his lover beside him? Oikawa wonders. Perhaps they were sitting on the couch, skin pressed close, Iwaizumi’s head on his lap as the watch a silly rom-com. Oikawa imagines Iwaizumi haphazardly remembering Oikawa’s existence — a fleeting thought, among all others regarding his wedding — and takes a couple of seconds to type out a message, then toss his phone to snuggle back into the arms of his lover. Ushijima, he is called. Oikawa doesn’t really care.

It takes Oikawa a few tries, before he decides ultimately not to reply. Whatever, he thinks. _I already told him I was coming anyway._

He switches the TV on, feet on the coffee table, hands clutching the bowl of noodles and a pair of chopsticks. His uses the chopsticks to stir his noodles absentmindedly, no longer having the heart to eat anything. The bowl is warm against his palm, and he briefly thinks of setting it down, to lay forgotten on the space beside his feet, but his stomach growls in protest, so he decides against it.

Perhaps this unwillingness to eat and move is somewhat an act of defiance. He knows Iwaizumi would hate seeing him like this, so glum and unhealthy and on the verge of losing it. And since there is still a part of Oikawa that is petty and relentless, he goes against Iwaizumi’s desire for his wellbeing, so maybe he can feel like he’s won, somehow, even if his rebellion is in secret.

Maybe… But he’s not really hurting anyone other than himself. This… whatever he’s doing — or not doing, in this case — his blatant disregard for his health is only killing him and no one else.

Now, he decides, determined, as he wolfs down his noodles, _I will not let this hurt me anymore._ He promises to himself — again, but with more resolve and will this time — that his moping has come to an end and, like a phoenix, he will rise from the ashes. Stronger and better.

But that can wait, he thinks. Tomorrow. When he gets his closure. For now, he’s going to fill his stomach and watch some TV.  
  
  


A few hours before the party, he finds that most of their high school friends are coming, so his nerves are eased a little. He messages Hanamaki and Matsukawa, asking if they wanted to go together. They said yes, so Oikawa waits for them outside a local shopping mall near his place. It’s a good thing they still kept in contact, despite Oikawa and Iwaizumi’s barely resolved issues.

Oikawa’s party clothes: a summer print button up shirt that’s opened to reveal a black shirt underneath, paired with a belt and some pants. As a public figure, he’d learned to dress himself properly. His manager had once chastised him for his unappealing fashion style, and he swears to God he’d never felt more embarrassed in his life. 

A car stops in front of him. “Yo!” Hanamaki greets, arm around Matsukawa as he reaches over the passenger seat to peer at Oikawa’s face. “Get in the back.”

“I knew I can always rely on my dear cab driver friends to always be at my beck and call,” Oikawa teases as he opens the backseat door and slides in. “Minus points for not opening the door for me, though.”

“You’re so fucking annoying,” Mattsun groans.

“I love you too.”

In the duration of the car ride, they filled each other in, catching each other up on their lives. They asked Oikawa all sorts of questions: When’s your next game? What’s it like being a national athlete? Which countries have you gone to? And Oikawa tells them that he’s taken a couple of weeks off, it’s great being able to keep doing what he loves, and that he’s gone to so many countries that he lost count.

Oikawa asks them, in turn, how their life has been. How’s university? Are you working? What’s it like living a life with so little glimpses of my handsome face? They roll their eyes at the last questions. Hanamaki tells Oikawa that he’s in university, while Matsun has a job. “Life’s a lot easier without your ugly mug,” says Matsun.

“Must have been what Iwaizumi felt,” Oikawa wants to joke, but not once in their conversation had they mentioned Iwaizumi, skirting around it so obviously that for a second Oikawa thinks it’s painful, so he doesn’t say it. Ironic, though, how they don’t talk about the person whose bachelor party they’re attending.

They get out of the car when Hanamaki parks it in front of a bar. It looked a lot fancier than the one the four of them used to drink at every once in a while to catch up. 

“Do you think someone hired strippers for Iwaizumi?” Matsun says, a sly grin on his face. “What I would give to see him so flustered.”

Makki snickers. “Now, why would you say that? You’re making me want to make some quick calls.” He winks playfully.

Oikawa laughs along, but he’s a little nervous, so he doesn’t add to the joke. The two must have noticed because they exchange glances, but didn’t say anything. Biting his lip, Makki looks like he’s about to speak, but Oikawa interrupts him, knowing what it’s gonna be about, “Save the dramatic talk, Makki. I wouldn’t come here if I didn’t want to.”

Makki raises his hands in surrender, shrugging. 

And when they push the doors open, they are greeted by loud music and the stink of beer. There’s quite a number of people, enough to populate a small bar, but not too much that it’s stuffy and suffocating.

Iwaizumi, who’s at the center of everything, like he always is, sees the door opening, and rushes over to them. He’s laughing, and the twinkle in his eyes never dimming even as he walks away from his other friends to greet his old ones. “You’re here!” he exclaims. He takes a shot from the glass he’s holding, and leaves it on a nearby table when it’s empty. 

“So no strippers, then?” Matsun jokes as Iwaizumi pulls him in for a hug. 

“Christ, no,” Iwaizumi says, chuckling. He turns to Hanamaki and hugs him too. Then, finally, his eyes are on Oikawa, and the latter’s lungs are squeezed tight, the air being sucked out of him like zero-g vacuum. There is a chokehold around Oikawa’s neck and he can’t breathe.

At the corner of his eye, he vaguely sees Makki and Matsun walk away. “Iwaizumi,” he says. He forces a smile on his face. “Congrats on the wedding. Can’t believe you’re getting married before me. Guess miracles are true, after all.”

Iwaizumi laughs, and Oikawa wonders why the hell he ever thought he’d be able to get over this man. He’s starting to regret having attended now. But before he can dwell on the thought, Iwaizumi says, “The wedding hasn’t even happened yet. But thank you, anyway. And I’m gonna pretend you never said the last part.”

“Pretense will never change reality, Iwaizumi,” Oikawa says. 

Iwaizumi’s smile drops a little. “I missed you, you loser,” he says. “Why’d you disappear on me?”

Here it comes. Oikawa swallows. A cliché, but it happened: the party around them blurs in the background. Oikawa’s vision tunnels on Iwaizumi, and he can almost imagine that they are the only ones in the room. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore,” he admits, voice quiet. “Wasn’t that the case?”

Iwaizumi frowns. At last, the light in his eyes fades. (Oikawa had wondered how long it would take for him to make Iwaizumi feel glum.) “Idiot,” he says. He looks around. No one really paid them any mind, but he pulls Oikawa outside. “Of course I didn’t want you to be so distant. You were my best friend. Even after we broke up, I didn’t want that to change.”

 _Were._ It’s true, Oikawa thinks, but it still hurt, coming from Iwaizumi’s mouth. “And how, exactly,” he demands. There is heat in his voice but he doesn’t raise it. “Were we supposed to remain friends after that, Iwaizumi? You said you were tired of me, and I thought you hated me.”

Oikawa half-hoped Iwaizumi would tell him “I could never hate you,” or something along those lines. As a sort of consolation, perhaps. But Iwaizumi is only silent for a few seconds. “Iwaizumi,” he repeats. His eyes look a little glassy and unfocused; he must be tipsy, Oikawa supposes. “You don’t call me Iwa-chan anymore.”

Oikawa smiles sadly. “I don’t,” he says softly, as if speaking louder would break whatever is left of their friendship. It felt _wrong_ to call him that, after all that happened between them. Things will never be the same, and calling him _Iwa-chan_ in the midst of all this mess felt sacrilegious. 

“What happened to us?” Iwaizumi asks, with genuine wonder that’s almost childlike. 

Oikawa looks at him: the curves of his face that Oikawa can trace in his sleep, eyebrows that crossed the space between them when he’s frowning, a pair of lips that used to be reserved for Oikawa, spiky hair that’s actually soft to the touch. Oikawa drinks him in and sees love.

_“I just don’t understand what you’re so afraid of,” Iwaizumi had said. “Had the lifetime we’ve spent together not been enough?”_

What _had_ Oikawa been so afraid of? That a relationship would soon break their bond? It's all so foolish, now that he looks back at it. Why did he waste all those years of their love over something as stupid as fear? Why did he let Iwaizumi go, when they were supposed to have a lifetime together? 

Iwaizumi had told Oikawa that he’d waited his whole life for him, and Oikawa felt sorry that he let such raw passion slip from his grasp.

“I’m so sorry,” Oikawa says. He places a hand on Iwaizumi’s cheek, wiping the single tear that had fallen. “But you’re happy now, yeah? So am I. I’m happy for you —” and Oikawa finds that he truly means it “—Iwa-chan.”

“Thank you,” Iwaizumi says. “And for the record, I could never bring myself to hate you. I’m kind of offended you ever thought that.” His tone is light, but there is goodbye in his eyes as he looks at Oikawa. A farewell to the rift that had grown large and painful between them. And because their world once revolved around each other and so little of anything else, they both knew it meant that they would try again — as friends, this time. Relearn what had once been instinct: knowing each other.

So this is closure.

There is no panacea for heartbreak, but this is a step closer to healing. Oikawa no longer feels like the yearning would kill him. It feels almost comforting now, because he knows that one day this will fade. The healing process will be difficult, but at least he’s far from the pathetic, weeping Oikawa he used to be.

Oikawa will never know another love like Iwaizumi’s, he’s sure of it. A hauntingly beautiful passion, so ambitious and raw that it would make all the poets say, “How could someone be so devoted to another?” 

There will never be anything that would compare to that love — unrestricted and powerful enough to bring someone to their knees — and Oikawa finds that he’s okay with it, because it meant that what they had is for the two of them only. 

“I love you,” he whispers for the last time as he lets Iwaizumi pull him back into the noise, and he feels the evening air carry the words away from him.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> twitter: 1994kuroo


End file.
